It’s gameday and it’s cold, it’s Green Bay at Lambeau Field so it’s time to drink and show who you support. And occasionally you can see more than the famous green and gold – even if you’d rather not. Photograph: David Stluka/Getty Images

A pink sunrise over Green Bay. As the breath stands out in the freezing cold of an autumn Wisconsin morning, the roads around Lambeau Field are already stirring. It is game day for the Green Bay Packers - the American football team formed on a local street corner in 1919 and owned by their fans - and the Atlanta Falcons are in town.

Gazebos, grills, hammocks, makeshift bars, tables and deckchairs have been left in preparation outside homes overnight. And when Lambeau Field's vast car park is opened four hours before the midday kick-off, the tailgate parties begin, as they do in every other available space around the stadium.

On the back of cars, station wagons, pick-ups and vans, thousands of soon-to-be-very-drunk Cheeseheads, as Packers fans are known, many wearing hats shaped like a triangular cheddar slice, hang posters and pennants, and position armchairs and sofas. Music blares, barbecues are fired, bratwurst and steaks dipped in marinade, whisky, wine, vodka and endless crates of beer appear. A very merry time begins.

'Look at my tattoos,' says a man who calls himself Santa. He is an enthusiastic 51-year-old with a long grey beard and flowing hair and must weigh around 20st. He is tailgating with friends behind an ambulance, which is parked next to a van that has two gigantic pink flamingos on the roof. Draped over the ambulance are bras - red, green, yellow, orange, blue, black, brown, and some that need cleaning.

'There's Rudolph the Reindeer, this one's a little girl whispering into Father Christmas's ear,' Santa says pulling up his Packers shirt to show his tattoos. 'It's my job, every year I give out presents. I start 31 October. You want a beer? Soon I'll get the grey drained from my beard. It takes three goes for that. Then the hairdresser uses white toner to make it like Santa Claus. Every week it costs $175 (£100) for a retouch.'

All of Green Bay, a tiny city of around 100,000 people on the shores of Lake Michigan, seems to have congregated here, as it does on each of the eight regular-season home games of the NFL season. Since 1960, every game at the stadium named after founder and first head coach, Earl 'Curly' Lambeau, has been a sell-out. There are 80,000 people on the season-ticket waiting-list and, with 30 or 40 becoming available each year, tailgating is how many Cheeseheads get closest to their beloved team. In a state with the second lowest beer-tax - six cents - and ranked America's worst for alcohol abuse, this means a lot of drinking.

Santa's friend Dave will not reveal his surname 'in case my wife finds out'. He is wearing a sticker that says The Optimistic Gent, is drinking beer and is the ambulance owner.

'We just got more,' roars a tipsy Santa pointing to a star-spangled bra. Bleary eyed, Dave explains. 'In 2000 when they began redoing the stadium we did a campaign, "Support the Legend." And we kept on. Bras give support, right?' he says, not quite sure the joke is understood.

Dave produces a collection of photographs - there are hundreds - that feature the owners of the bras swaying free in the cold Wisconsin wind. In place to protect the modesty of the topless women - who range in age - are Packers stickers shaped like Playboy bunnies.

'It's freezing, there isn't much else to do in Wisconsin,' Dave says. 'So you drink and follow the Packers.' Which is what occurs until noon and beyond for a game the Packers will lose 27-24. Some Cheeseheads go into Lambeau Field, some pile into tents in the so-called Tundra Zone to watch on TV. Some just keep on drinking.

The Packers' status as the only community-owned professional team in America has been in place since five local businessmen - known as the Hungry Five - formed the Green Bay Football Corporation to rescue the team in 1921. This makes the Packers unique, an anomaly, and Cheeseheads are fanatical followers. 'I came alone and it cost me around $2,500,' says Michael, a nurse from Denmark. 'My wife's not too pleased, but what can you do?'

The term Cheesehead was appropriated from fans in detested rival city Chicago, who taunted them about Wisconsin being America's dairy capital. In 1987 Ralph Bruno made the first cheddar hat and wore it to a baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers, the team from down the road, and an official name for one of the most loyal tribes in sport was born. In Britain only Newcastle are, perhaps, comparable. Except the Packers are a slickly run organisation. And boasting a record 12 NFL championships, the team of Lambeau, legendary coach Vince Lombardi, on-field generals Bart Starr and Brett Favre, also know how to win - fans call their very modest home city Titletown, USA and are not laughed at.

Then there are the Packers' 112,015 shareholders. Many are third or fourth generation, with no thought of selling. 'I bought them for my mom and when she died I had them framed,' says Tom Parker, a fan who has hired the 'same driveway we got last year to tailgate with 20 friends' on a nearby street.

'It's a fairy tale type story,' says Starr, their great quarterback who was MVP in the Packers' Super Bowl wins in 1967 and 1968. 'How it occurred is amazing. Now it may be small, but in those days Green Bay was tiny.'

The team was formed in 1919 by Lambeau and George Calhoun, the sports editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette following a chance conversation on the street. Calhoun had followed Lambeau's football career as a high-school full-back and at Notre Dame University. During Christmas 1918 Lambeau caught tonsillitis and after six bedridden weeks decided to stay in Green Bay for the winter rather than return to college. Wanting to continue playing, Lambeau squeezed $500 from the Indian Packing Company, a local meat-packing business, for whom he worked as a clerk.

Calhoun, meanwhile, advertised in the Gazette for players. Two years after forming, the Packers joined the American Professional Football Association, forerunner of the NFL, and in 1929 they won the first of their 12 championships.

Calhoun, who also liked a beer - one tale tells of him quickly downing 18 from a 24-tin crate - served as the Packers' media man until 1947, publishing a weekly press release called the Dope Sheet, which was revived two years ago. Lambeau retired from playing in 1929, aged 32, but continued coaching the Packers for another 20 years and was one of the initial inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Lambeau was finally forced out in a power struggle in 1949.

In 1923, 1935, 1950 and 1997, the Packers issued shares. 'Other NFL teams have one owner, we have the community,' says Packers president Mark Murphy. 'Forty-five directors are voted in and approved by the shareholders. An executive of seven run the business.'

After Lambeau left the Packers, having won six NFL titles, that business became a decade of losing until Lombardi's arrival in 1959. 'I was drafted in 1956. We had a losing season that year, in '57 and '58. He immediately turned it around,' says Starr of a genius who became a head coach at the relatively late age of 45, yet would have the Super Bowl trophy named after him.

When Lombardi retired in 1968 he had masterminded victory in Super Bowls I and II. The second was reached in an amazing game against the Dallas Cowboys on New Year's Eve 1967.

Known as the Ice Bowl, it also gave Lambeau Field its Frozen Tundra nickname. 'You don't want to know how cold,' Starr says. 'Bitter. Unbelievably.' The official temperature, with wind chill, was a staggering -36F. Unsurprisingly, the undersoil heating failed. With Dallas leading 17-14, Starr, who says he still suffers frostbite, had driven the Packers from their 32-yard line to within inches of the Cowboys end zone when he called a time-out with 16 seconds left.

Starr takes up the story. 'I ran to the sidelines and said to coach, "There's nothing wrong with the running play. The problem is the backs are slipping. I'm upright so I can shuffle and lunge behind them." So help me God. At a crucial, cold time like this, all Vince Lombardi said was, "Then run it and let's get the hell out of here." I was chuckling running back to the line.'

Starr scored with the play to win the game. Victory over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II followed. But it would be 29 years until Favre inspired a third Packers' win of the Lombardi Trophy, renamed following the coach's premature death, aged 57, in 1970. When Favre's victorious team returned home, 200,000 Cheeseheads awaited.

How much, then, of the future depends on that support? 'Many people own shares, but it's symbolic,' says Scott Schwartz, whose 'Game Day' book is signed by Cheeseheads from all over the world. 'We don't have much of a say.'

A Packers source explains. 'The stock is basically a donation. The most recent sale in 1997 made around $100m - each share was $200 - and older ones were made worth 1,000 of the new issue, so a few whose families or businesses bought stock in the first sale have most voting power.'

Yet other fans seem more than happy with their contribution. And while a further scheme would again rely on the goodwill of a local community where the average salary is $33,000, the Packers have invested elsewhere.

There is a 30-year waiting list for the 166 luxury boxes installed during the 2003 face-lift. That also raised capacity to 72,928, while doing an admirable job of retaining the stadium's original 1950s style. Land around Lambeau Field has also been bought to develop.

Next Sunday at Wembley, the New Orleans Saints 'host' the San Diego Chargers. This follows last year's first regular-season game played there, in which the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins. The NFL have begun a programme where each team will give up a home game in order to expand the sport worldwide and Packers officials are in full support, but it is clear the fans are not keen. 'We would not like it - to Europe, to Madison in Wisconsin, anywhere,' says lifelong Cheesehead Marty Hendricks. 'People build their fall weekend around games and tailgating with friends and family. And I don't think most fans care too much about the NFL going global.'

• Sky Sports is broadcasting more than 125 live NFL games this season via its interactive coverage on Sky digital

Take your medicine: rugby doctors set the standard

So, American football fans think they are party animals? In which case, they really should hop across the Pond and take a look at English rugby union supporters if they want to see true professionals at work.

Take Twickenham, where bountiful quantities of the finest wines, spirits and beers are sunk with unfathomable zeal in the West car park. Mind you, the patrons who frequent the most famous car park in sport would not be so vulgar as to use the word 'tailgating'.

But it's not just the West car park that resembles a lake of alcohol on Twickenham match days. Wander around the bars or the nearby pubs, and you will see pint upon pint being downed more quickly than it takes Usain Bolt to run 100m. That said, Bolt probably does a better rendition of 'American Pie' and 'Sloop John B' than most England supporters.

Then there is the annual Army v Royal Navy match at Twickenham, which regularly attracts more than 40,000 spectators, some of whom can barely put one foot in front of the other - and that's before they even arrive at the ground. Perhaps not surprising, given that they will have been availing themselves of copious amounts of the hard stuff since leaving their military bases in the early morning.

But there is simply nothing to match the final of the United Hospitals Challenge Cup, the world's oldest rugby tournament, which takes place at Old Deer Park, the home of London Welsh, in early spring. Flour bombs and egg-throwing are not quite as prevalent as they once were, but some of the imbibing among the on-looking medical students knocks Twickenham's finest wreckers into a cocked hat.

It is a sight to behold as some of the country's most eminent surgeons-in-waiting - a number of them swigging voraciously from rapidly emptying bottles of whisky, brandy and port - stagger around so helplessly, they are quite possibly unaware that a game of rugby is actually taking place. Now, those are party animals.

'It is a bit tamer than it used to be,' says Terry Gibson, the president of the United Hospitals RFC. 'But there is still a party atmosphere, with a lot of jocular ragging and people enjoying themselves in the bar.' No kidding. Christopher Lyles